It is unfortunate that the Bush administration has decided to turn the requirement to investigate the tragic intelligence failure of Sept. 11 into a personal attack.
Everyday we are hearing about more and more relevant tidbits of information that were available before 9-11 that might have been used to prevent it. What needs to be understood immediately is why those tidbits were not put together. Then learn from our mistakes, and use this harsh lesson to prevent future attacks. It is of paramount importance that this failure be understood and corrected; every day the investigation is stalled plays into the hands of future terrorists.
Instead of enabling the chance to quickly put the lessons learned from this travesty to work, the Bush administration, backed by the well-funded Republican Party machinery, is hard-selling both the “it’s not our fault” and the “it’s not patriotic to ask questions right now” spins. Those responses are specifically designed to scuttle the mandatory inquiry. The administration’s paranoid reaction is potentially harmful to the safety of our nation and is unquestionably impeding the essential and inevitable investigation.
Taking a critical look at what went wrong is not a personal attack on the president. It is a significant opportunity to improve our intelligence community that should be undertaken immediately without political obfuscation.
Arlington
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